


Dissever

by screechfox



Series: Amputate [1]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Amputation, Austistic William Strife, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-11 00:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7016758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screechfox/pseuds/screechfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was an accident. Life goes on.</p><p>But after a visit from Lomadia and Nilesy, maybe not quite in the way that Strife had been expecting to begin with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissever

**Author's Note:**

> The final of my Tumblr-prompt fics, written ages after the time it was sent in and not actually relating much to the original thing - but that'll come in later installments to this, when I get around to them.
> 
> Inspired a fair bit by Sparxflame's talking about Strife and his tech + inventory bracelets, so full credit goes to them for their awesome ideas.

It all starts about as innocently as anything Strife has ever done. 

In college, before he started doing fiddly machine-work, he’d only had a passing knowledge of robotics - just enough to get by in his exams. Building robot assistants was less interesting when Strife knew exactly how to spin pitches to get cut-rate labour, and when the practical work was fairly enjoyable anyway.

Of course, he never really expected to be stuck on a mostly desolate planet with no major population centers to speak of. When that happened, with no workforce in sight, he found himself experimenting with robotics more and more often.

Tucked away in every single machine room are a pair of homemade stabilising gloves. They don’t get used often, but Strife can’t always trust his hands to stay still when they need to, and after the time he ruined a million-dollar project after an instinctive movement… Well, needless to say, he doesn’t do important work without them.

The mundane work, he can afford to make mistakes on - the gloves, while useful, are uncomfortable, suppressing  _ any _ unnecessary movement his fingers make. Strife doesn’t like the way his fingers feel the insistent urges of movement, doesn’t like the unprofessionality, but he dislikes the skin-crawling feeling when they’re suppressed even more.

That, he figures, is worth a few mistakes every now and then.

 

Now, though. Now he sits, breathing heavily, against the brick wall of his machine room, clutching the bloody stump where his arm used to be. Strife had wrapped his waistcoat around it to staunch the flow - nothing else to use but cloths covered in oil and cleaning fluid - but he’s still vaguely dizzy from the adrenaline rush, and a pounding feeling in his head.

Desperately, he knows that he needs to get up, go and do something about this, rather than just rocking against the brick and feeling the blood seep through the fabric and onto his hand. But Strife can’t make himself move beyond the shifting, back and forth motion that his entire body is going through.

He knows this feeling - is well acquainted with it, in all honestly - but he dully wishes that it hadn’t come on  _ now _ . 

_ Now _ , when Strife is mapping out the quickest route to the infirmary in his head. His eyes are screwed shut to stop him having to look at the mess of blood on the floor, and what was his arm, with all its scars and flaws, lying in the middle of the scarlet like a dead thing.

A few moments pass of nothingness; of the shaking, rhythmic motion that Strife is going through to ground himself from blanking out, and shutting down completely.

Then: Click. The door opens, and he jerks himself still, tracking sound carefully.

The familiar squeak of rubber - it’s a cleaning bot. Strife forces himself to open his eyes and watch it go about its business. The quiet of it is almost eerie - a sterile sort of silence that fills his brain with nothingness.

The mess on the floor disappears into the bot’s interior almost soundlessly.

When it reaches the arm, the bot pauses for a moment, and Strife can count down the seconds it takes to look up the correct method of disposing of an arm. And then, without a fanfare, it scoops it up and trundles out. He can hear the splashing of his own blood moving in the tank inside it.

That interruption was enough to get him moving, and Strife shakily gets to his feel, very conscious of the bloody smears on the wall behind him, but not letting it bother him for now. The cleaning bot can deal with that later. 

The floor in front of him is spotless, like nothing had ever happened.

 

It’s a few hours later. At least, so Strife guesses. He hasn’t actually looked at a clock since he healed up the stump of his arm into something less horrifying, though, as expected, he was unable to restore it.

He should get back to work - there’s no time for wallowing around here - but he’s just been lying on the soft sheets of a bed. Dearly, Strife just wants to curl up and sleep for the first time in what feels like forever, and the comfort of the bed is not helping.

Even if he could justify it to himself, though, he knows he won’t even be able to sleep. Not because he’ll get nightmares or anything; but because he can feel the echo of his arm moving, shifting, fidgeting. It hurts, but he’d be worried if he didn’t - it’s the constant finger movements that he  _ can’t suppress _ that are bothering him.

Since it all calmed down, the movement has been constant. It’s almost enough to start him fidgeting with the other hand - but he buries his real fingers into the covers below him and staves off the urge like it’s a poisonous thing. 

The phantom of his lost arm is tapping, now, like the tick-tock of an old clock.

Strife starts planning what to do next, one step at a time. Get up from bed, walk to elevator, go to kitchen, make about three cups of black coffee, drink all of them. Get back to work.  
  


There’s a sound from the intercom, perched by the door.

“Good evening, Strife!” Says a perky accented voice, and in that moment, he’s never wanted to drop his head into his hands and groan  _ more _ . It’s Nilesy. There’s a hiss of a shush, and then Lomadia’s far calmer voice crackles through. “Hello, Strife. We were wondering if we could have some assistance with some of our crops.”

Any other day, and Strife would have accepted in a heartbeat. Help with crops is almost free payment. But now… He clears his throat, watching the intercom adjust itself to his distance.

“Can it wait?” His tone is harsh, but at least it doesn’t shake like he thought it would. 

There’s a pause, and Strife would think that they’d left, were it not for the soft crackling of their breathing. He can see it in his mind’s eye - a roughened Lomadia exchanging a look with a bewildered Nilesy, a nonverbal communication that he’s never mastered.

“No,” Lomadia’s voice comes through, after another few seconds. “It’s urgent.”

Strife almost wants to laugh at the idea that crops and gardening could be anything resembling urgent. His greenhouse is the one thing he hasn’t forced into efficiency beyond the obligatory automation, and he can’t see how it would be different for anyone else.

“Urgent?” He asks, keeping his tone flat and perfectly level. “I’m not sure what could be critical about crops.”

There’s no pause this time, just Lomadia’s sharp tones, brusque and businesslike in a way that Strife admires in his more wistful moments. 

“We have some new herbs, courtesy of our local coven, that we need more of for an important ritual. But they’re not growing when they should be, and if we don’t get them soon, we’ll be forced to wait at least another year. Nilesy and I were wondering if you could offer your advice.”

Great. Not only is Strife being asked to play the solutionist on today of all days, it’s to help with some witches’ ritual.

He sighs, taking a long moment to contemplate it, though he really knows full well what his answer will be.

“Fine,” He says, “Come into the lobby and I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”

 

As Strife enters the lobby, Lomadia is chiding Nilesy for some unknowable thing, a warm, exasperated smile on her face. Nilesy looks like he’s about to respond in kind, but he turns as Strife’s footsteps tap across the stone floor.

There’s a beaming grin on Nilesy’s face for a moment, and then Strife can pin-point the exact moment that the other man sees his arm.

Even Lomadia’s calm is broken for a moment, her mouth forming a round ‘o’ before she regains her composure and meets his eyes instead. He stares back at her, not knowing what she’s trying to see, until she frowns and looks away - nudging Nilesy in the arm instead.

“You’re here to talk herbs, not my arm.” Strife says, before either of them can say anything. “So talk.”

Neither of them seem particularly pleased with that, but then Lomadia pulls some herbs out of her pocket and it doesn’t really matter anymore - as Strife tries to identify them, something slots into place in his brain, and he feels more at ease.

If he can only gesture with one arm, and sometimes the phantom of the other, then so be it.

 

It doesn’t last, of course. As he finishes telling Lomadia about the right conditions for the herbs and the conversation winds down to payment, the smooth edges of the world become sharp and jagged again, and Strife’s words become shorter and more clipped.

Lomadia doesn’t seem to care, though it may have something to do with listening to Strife tell her every little detail about the plants she still grasps. Nilesy, though, is looking at him with more of a serious expression than Strife thinks he’s ever seen on him.

“I’ll bring some gold over in a week or so,” Lomadia says, brisk. “Once we’ve got some evidence that you’re not just making this up to get paid.” The expression on her face suggests she could tell that he  _ definitely _ wasn’t making anything up, but he gets why she’s still cautious.

“So we’re done here,” He states, and she nods, pausing to frown at him for one last moment before turning to leave.

“Come on, Nilesy,” Lomadia calls behind her, as Nilesy shuffles off the polished surface he’d perched on for Strife’s… lecture, really. “It’s a long broomstick ride home.”

Nilesy rolls his eyes, sharing a look with Strife as if they somehow have kinship in this matter - as if Strife’s ever ridden a broomstick in his life. But for a moment, the sharp exuberance softens, and Nilesy seems almost unsure.

“Y’know, one of my friends lost an arm,” He murmurs, as if not wanting Lomadia to hear. His tone is conversational, as if it doesn’t make Strife’s skin crawl with the memory.

“Oh yeah?” Strife asks, and then pauses, going to cross his arms before he realises the futility of that gesture. “And what did they do about it?”

Nilesy gives him a wry grin, pleased, and shrugs. “What  _ else _ do you do around here? She built herself a new one.”

And with that, he’s gone, leaving Strife staring after him; Nilesy’s words the catalyst to an idea that had only been half-brewing in the back of his head.

Huh.

 

(When Strife gets up to his bedroom, after one of the longest days he’s had recently, he’s surprised to see a gunmetal glimmer in the corner of his vision as he turns the lights on. 

It’s a bracelet.

The inventory bracelet that he’d been wearing before… the accident. Strife had almost forgotten about it in the rush of sensations.

It’s cold on his palm as he picks it up, but it hums, responding to the pattern of his skin-- And there is his inventory, spread before him, as if nothing had ever happened.

When he stares back down at the bracelet, he finds himself smiling.

Yeah. At least he has this.)

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at screechfoxes on Tumblr.


End file.
